During the last decades, mobile terminals have become a common item for many people throughout the world. From being an item focused on telephone communication, the mobile terminals of today are more to be described as portable media and communication devices with, for instance, built-in camera, Internet access and many other communication services.
The new features set new demands on the usability of the mobile terminals. One important usability issue is cursor controlling. An easy and intuitive navigation, i.e. cursor controlling, may be decisive when a customer chooses a new mobile terminal. Therefore, it is of great importance for mobile terminal developers to take usability issues into account.
Another aspect is that the mobile terminals of today are used, due to the increased portability, under more difficult circumstances, regarding movements, shakes, cramped positions etc. Hence, a more robust control is necessary in order to provide an easy and precise cursor navigation.
In the early mobile terminals, navigation in menus and between different services was made with a number of buttons, e.g. an ‘up’ button and a ‘down’ button. Later on, due to more sophisticated services, a joystick was introduced, which supported a number of directions, in most cases at least ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘right’ and ‘left’. Although the number of directions was increased for such a cursor control device, the applications of the mobile terminals were increasingly complex, which caused a number of new usability issues.
One of these issues was that the joystick, or other type of cursor control device, was too sensitive in some cases. For instance, when going through a drop-down menu, there was a not negligible risk of ending up outside the menu, i.e. not being able to steer the cursor straight, and hence exiting the menu unintentionally. However, in other cases, e.g. when drawing a figure, an as sensitive cursor control device as possible is preferable.
This problem is present for all electronic apparatuses having a display with a GUI (Graphical User Interface) and a cursor control device, such as a mobile terminal, a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), a hand-held computer, a lap-top computer or a stationary computer.
A solution for improved usability is presented in US 2004/0021694, which discloses a computer implemented method for changing between a cursor control mode and a scroll control mode. The cursor control mode allowing a user to move a cursor in a graphical user interface (GUI) and the scroll control mode allows the user to scroll in the GUI. The cursor and scroll movements are based on positional data supplied by an input device such as a mouse.
This document mainly treats the problem associated with having a scroll controller and a cursor controller separated from each other.